A pair of antique Chinese cups have sold for a total of almost £2 million after going under the hammer at London’s famous auction house Sotheby’s.
The painted porcelain pieces, decorated in the famille-rose style, date back 300 years and provide an example of the work by craftsmen at the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen, who had begun to use white enamel from Europe.
Selling at £950,000 each on Wednesday (£1.9 million together), they were described by the organisation as “embodying to perfection the refined aesthetic of the Yongzheng Emperor”.
They originally belonged to 20th-century collector Edward T Chow and marked the top lot in the Important Chinese Art sale, which generated a total of £6.4 million.
Though simple in their shape and white colour, their design includes fruiting pomegranate, peach and loquat, representing the “sanduo”, or “three abundances” motif, symbolising long life, plentiful offspring and blessings.
The pictures mark how painters of the time had begun to experiment with depicting naturalism in a way that was not previously possible.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here